A Miserable Pile
by knockabiller
Summary: I guess I haven't made myself clear enough: this story is a PARODY of those ridiculous "Alternate Universe Where Everyone Is In High School and Wears Clothing For Some Reason" and "Yo Let's Make Sally A Jerk To Make Amy Look Better By Comparison" stories. Please leave a critique so that I may send you a "parody" of an angry PM concerning your inability to recognize fine literature.
1. Sweet, Sweet Amy gets Hassled by a Jerk

The powder-blue sky was smudged with clouds, but the air was crisp and the breeze was gentle. Each breath polished your thoughts to crystal-clean sharpness and made your lungs feel like they were sparkling. The afternoon sun was bright, but not harsh. All in all, it was a beautiful day.

Big frickin' deal. Amy Rose stomped down the sidewalk, gripping her pink backpack so hard her knuckles were probably turning white under her gloves. Man, she hated beautiful days. They had a lot of_ nerve_, only coming around during the school year. The grotesquely pleasant weather only made the load of homework weighing down her backpack more difficult to bear.

The cool wind blew from behind her, and a crispy leaf skittered into her path. In her angst, Amy wasn't exactly paying attention to the sidewalk. She trod upon this specimen of optimal autumn crunchiness, splitting the air with a delicious pop – talk about salt in the wound. Amy yearned to fling her knapsack into the wild blue yonder and tackle Sonic, wherever he was, into a pile of leaves; sadly, this was not an option.

She had book reports to do, after all; and after that at least a solid hour of worksheets, and character analysis journals, and essays about Napolion, and then there was that big history exam looming on the horizon... ugh, there was so much! The enormity of the workload was difficult to contain in her mind, let alone feasibly finish. It was enough to crush a girl's spirit. Somehow, she soldiered on, though she heaved a bitter sigh.

School was just so inconvenient! And, compared to the adventures she had when she was chasing Sonic, it was boring as crap – she couldn't imagine how anyone would prefer mundane school drama to the heart-pounding adrenaline rush that cracking down on villains offered. Amy knit her brows in frustration. If only her friends were beside her to help whether the pain – but Cream was a first-grader, and Big was too old. No, she had to endure this torment on her own. And it really was torment: every moment she spent chained to her desk was a romantic moment with Sonic she'd never have; every moment she wasted in the airless classroom was a moment she could have been wrapped around his hunk-tastic arms.

_Sonic_ didn't have to go to school. He was smart and cool and successful already; high school had nothing left to teach him. Obviously, Tails didn't have to go to school, either - he took advanced college courses online just for kicks. Knuckles presumably absorbed knowledge from that rock he sat on all day. And, as far as Amy knew, Shadow had gotten all his schoolwork out of the way back in ancient times, when he was still an icky alien larva or whatever.

The guttural roar of a motorcycle suddenly rattled the air. Amy's ears pricked up, and she whirled around – her face fell when she recognized the hedgehog thundering down the street on his Hurley-Jacobson.

A sudden, chilling fear gripped her ribcage like an icy metal hand. Not Sonic. Not now. Not like this.

Amy turned and bolted down the sidewalk, the incriminating backpack bouncing on her shoulders. She hoped she could get to her apartment before Sonic saw her like this – yeah, he probably wouldn't care that she was involved with the education system like a normal kid, but... gosh, it was so embarrassing! The Hero wouldn't comprehend the plight of the pitiful schoolchild, either. He'd think she was making a big deal about jack squat - which was completely true, but also unbecoming.

Luck was not on her side, however; she ran out of breath just as the motorcycle encountered a stoplight. The two hedgehogs were forced to stop.

Cursing luxuriously under his breath, the motorcyclist braked violently and managed to only wrinkle the pavement a little. The force of this abrupt halt was such that it practically flung the shades off his face. Officially irritated, he pushed his sunglasses back up his snout and grumbled something nasty. Red lights were such an inconvenience – especially this one in particular, since it was broken. All the time he spent sitting here was time he could have spent going fast, smashing robots, or even polishing his gun collection. What a worthless device...

Over the proud purr of Dark Rider's engine, a gross, wet sound rose to prominence and, conspiring to compound his irritation further, scraped across his ears like grimy sandpaper. He glanced to his right and identified the source of the ghastly noise as one Amy Rose.

She was doubled-over, emitting ugly rasps, with a strange apparatus strapped to her back. The point of this behavior remained unclear. Perhaps she was seeking to mock him by imitating that ugly prototype, the Biolizard? Whatever her intentions, she was making a fool out of herself.

"You're making a fool out of yourself," he informed her.

The pink girl jolted and straightened up quickly. Showtime! "Yeah, but..." She winked and struck a pose she thought was cute, almost toppling over in the process. "...oh, Sonic, my darling, I'm a fool for _you!_"

Shadow lowered his sunglasses to glare at her properly.

She beamed at him for a moment, uncomprehending, until recognition finally clicked – and her cheeks turned from peach-pink to a truly magnificent scarlet. "...Oh," she squeaked. "Heeyy, Shadow."

"That's the fifth time," Shadow announced, wearily. "This _week_."

It was Tuesday.

"Omigosh, I'm sorry, okay?!" Amy squealed, burying her face in her hands. "You just... looked... so cool... and Sonic-like..."

"Very cool and Sonic-like on my jet-black and crimson motorcycle, certainly," Shadow snapped. "Just the most Sonic-like thing in the world. Especially considering the dual vulcan cannons mounted on the back wheel and the symbol of the alien race I completely slaughtered emblazoned on the fuel tank as a war trophy. Why, the very _definition_ of Sonic-like, I tell you." He jabbed a finger at Amy. "You, girl, have a problem."

"I said I'm sorry! It was an accident! What do you want from me?"

"I want you to cease confusing me with inferior beings, if it's not too much trouble."

Amy ground her teeth and made a strangled noise. "Sonic is not inferior, you jerk!" She stomped her foot for emphasis and whipped out her best case for Sonic's defense: "He's, like, totally awesome! You're just jealous 'cause he's _way_ faster, cooler,_ and _hotter than you!"

"Hmph." Shadow rolled his eyes and leaned back in his seat. "Don't waste my time with your infantile adulation, Pinky."

"Oh yeah?" Pinky puffed up like an angry chicken. She didn't know what adulation meant, but it sounded like an insult. "What's got you in such a rush, huh?"

"Well," Shadow said, coolly, "I'm currently off to Club 'Rouge' for the afternoon tournament, and then, after I inevitably win, Rouge and I are going to have dinner and rob a bank or two; and then, I plan to go skeet-shooting with Omega at six, followed by fleet-shooting with the Doctor, and I'll see if I can't squeeze in a bit of vigilante justice before the Chao In Space showing tonight."

It was common knowledge that Club "Rouge" was a fight club, but you weren't supposed to talk about that. Amy groaned internally, agonized. _That sounds like so much fun.._. "Huh! Big whoop!"

"Is that so?" Shadow casually leaned on Dark Rider's handlebars, smirking. "And what are _you_ doing tonight, Miss Rose?"

The truth fell out of her mouth before she could formulate a suitably-impressive lie. "...Homework."

To this, Shadow raised an eyebrow, legitimately curious despite himself. "What's that?"

Amy couldn't believe it. Look at that creep, all high and mighty up on his tacky, over-grown Big Wheel... he didn't even know what homework _was! _Why, he probably hadn't suffered a day in his life, and here he was – cruel beast – dangling his I-don't-have-to-go-to-school privilege over her head, taunting her! Now, just for the record, _Sonic_ wouldn't pull this kind of baloney on a lady. _He_ was a gentleman. Amy herself couldn't fathom how she kept mixing the two blurs up.

She fumed for a moment, then relaxed. Clearly he didn't understand the scope of the torture she slogged through every day. Maybe she could still twist this to her advantage – anything to wipe that condescending sneer off his cool and Sonic-like face.

"Oh, didn't you know?" she said, sweetly. Her voice took on an air of mystique as she parlayed up her parleying. "Homework is a very... 'special' assignment, given to us students."

Shadow looked mildly intrigued. Emphasis on mildly. "Like a mission?"

Amy nodded enthusiastically, continuing in hushed tones. "Yeah, exactly! A daily mission, handed out by the school, that tests your intelligence and endurance. These things are serious business, Shadow. Each assignment is real difficult, and they always take a ton of time to finish... and you gotta be super careful the whole time, because even one error can mean..." - she drew a finger across her neck - "...if you get my drift."

For a moment there, Amy thought she had successfully impressed him – but then he scoffed. "Hmph. Child's play."

"It's not!"

"Whatever." Shadow glanced impatiently at the stoplight – still red. Damn, it was _broken_. "So... What's this... 'school' thing?"

Amy bit her lip and considered how best to twist her words. "It's like... a training center, sorta. You go there to learn how to survive the world. It's very stressful, because the tests are brutal and you gotta memorize stuff about old battles and junk – like, you need to know every facet of Napolion's three big mistakes and all that. So you don't repeat them, right? And then, after you study 'em in the books, you have to survive all the combat simulations in the gym, and that's no easy task. Children have snapped ribs attempting some of them... or worse! And I haven't even gotten to the cafeteria yet... the food is inedible on purpose, to get you accustomed to eating like, moldy old carcasses. You know, in case you get trapped in a cave or whatever. Finally, just when you think it's over, you have to deal with all this homework, which is basically just what they drilled into your poor brain all day, just for a second time. Oh, and the students are a bunch of morons."

"Yourself included?" Shadow sneered.

"That's not what I-"

The black-and-red hedgehog was focused more on the stoplight than Amy. "Seems awfully basic," he yawned. "Especially the homework, if it's merely a review."

"Well, it's not basic at all! I, unlike you, have actually _done_ homework, so I can tell you – from experience – that it's hard!" Incensed, Amy planted her hands on her hips, rearing up like a cobra. "It takes me hours just to get my worksheets done!"

"I don't doubt it," Shadow drawled. "But you must realize, pink hedgehog, that I, unlike you_,_ am the Ultimate Life form – and so I, unlike you, would eliminate this so-called 'home-work' in a matter of seconds." He idly picked at the fur on his arm as he calmly continued to explain: "When pitted against someone of my prowess, whatever passes as 'challenging' among your ilk amounts to laughable at best. It's simple math."

Amy's anger blazed up again. "What exactly are you trying to say? Huh? Are you calling me stupid?"

"Basically."

A gold-and-scarlet warhammer materialized in the girl's clenched fists. Screeching indignantly, Amy slammed her Piko-Piko mallet into the pavement. The concrete buckled on impact – everything in a ten-yard radius shook. "WRONG. ANSWER."

Incidentally, the tremor jostled the busted stoplight just enough to snap the lazy circuits back into working order. The light burned bright green and, wasting no time, Shadow gunned the motor – with a monstrous roar from the engine, Dark Rider shot down the street at full tilt, one enraged pre-teen in hot pursuit.

Swinging her hammer with reckless abandon, Amy charged after him with a ferocity that evoked visions of a starving cavewoman barreling after a potential meal. Not that it did her any good. Shadow smirked at the pink fool who, for all her bloodthirsty threats of impending bodily harm, was swiftly shrinking in his rear-view mirror.

He knew perfectly well that a school was a center of learning – learning of the academic variety, to be precise. The pink hedgehog's pathetic attempts to pull the wool over his conjoined eye were so pitiful they approached endearing, only to veer sharply away at the last minute. He could understand her reasoning, though. She was ashamed. Observing her tire out so easily from a mere sprint cemented it in his mind: school made one weak. It wasn't hard to imagine how, either. Sitting around, gathering dust in some educational facility for eight hours was hardly an optimal strategy for conditioning, physical or mental. The very thought of it sent a small shudder down Shadow's spines.

Suddenly, the weather seemed so much more beautiful.

Shadow grinned to himself as he launched Dark Rider off a ramp, pulled a sick 360 spin, landed on a telephone line, grinded for a few seconds while shedding a hail of sparks upon the heads of many confused pedestrians, and then hopped his bike onto Battle Highway. This thrifty shortcut saved him the five seconds that simply using the on ramp would have cost him. Plus, it made him look ridiculously cool. Those who can grind a motorbike along telephone wires are a distinguished few.

He switched on Dark Rider's stereo system and set off towards the neon-edged Night Babylon district, blasting Neutral Chao Garden at an obtrusively loud volume. "Let the coarse whimpering of Jeff Mangum herald my coming," he whispered to no-one in particular, and a scythelike smile edged across his face.

Briefly, Shadow turned his eyes skyward, absorbing the heavens through the lenses of his shades. Still were they beautiful. He thought of the poor pink wretch and his smile split into a full-fledged grin.

"Man, I am _so_ glad I don't have to go to school."


	2. Poor, Sweet Amy is not mentioned

"_What do you MEAN, I have to go to school?!_" Shadow yelled, slamming his fist into the table and leaving a massive dent.

Unfazed, the flickering holographic head of the GUN Commander raised an eyebrow dryly. "I'm sorry, was I unclear?"

Incapable of expressing his outrage, Shadow grit his fangs. The urge to flip the table that had summoned this irksome human was overpowering.

"Eeeasy, tiger," Rouge cooed, attempting to soothe the savage beast with the music of her voice and failing miserably. She pressed gently on his shoulder, intending to lower him back into his seat; he was so rigid with anger, however, that tipping over a rhinoceros with a gentle poke would have been easier. "What'd my coffee table ever do to you, huh?"

"Up until ten minutes ago, nothing," Shadow grumbled, looking strained.

Whatever did he mean by this? To discover what happened, it seems we must see what took place ten minutes ago.

Roughly ten minutes prior to punching Rouge's coffee table, Dark Rider and its dark rider pulled up to the glittering Club "Rouge." Shadow had survived his Amy encounter with aplomb, but her sad excuse for a rampage only whet his appetite for wanton violence. He needed more.

And where better to get his fix than from the most renown non-fight club in town? Club "Rouge" certainly wasn't a fight club, especially if the person asking happened to be a cop. It was merely an utterly unremarkable casino that just so happened to offer some... _special_ services (for members only, mind you). Pretty the only thing that happened at Club "Rouge" was completely legal non-confrontational encounters. Shadow delved into the hectic bramble of neon lights and twinkling slot machines, wound his way to the back, flashed his member card at the bouncers hovering by the entrance, and slunk down into the underground arena, where all the non-fighting took place.

Now, the arena was little more than a spacious basement level – or it would have been, if Rouge hadn't stolen a few pinball tables from the good doctor's Casino Park and crammed them down here. Each table could easily be roped off into smaller pits so more than one non-fight could go on at once. Spectators sat high above the violence on arcades of red velvet seats, liberated from an opera house in Spagonia, while non-brawlers duked it out amidst flashing bumpers, sparkling paddles, and dazzling matrices of lights. A good non-clobbering was accompanied by a chorus of cheery chimes from the pinball gadgets and a rousing cheer from the crowds overhead.

In their natural habitat, the pinball tables were covered with Hexaccel fields to keep them fast and frictionless, but without a stolen supply of energy from the Grand Metropolis's power plant to maintain them, they were hardly slippery. And, even though the glassy tables were made out of six-inch-thick sheets of transparent aluminum, they were coated with some kind of silicone gel that made them feel like sport mats. In other words, getting decked didn't hurt the body so much as the pride (and maybe the ring count).

Club "Rouge" usually hosted its tournaments on Friday nights, but once in a while, they held one in the afternoon. This was a special competition, pitting Shadow and Rouge against any poor bastard that happened to show up. There weren't any entry requirements other than attendance. Whoever got the fantastic idea to go after their collective throne as undisputed masters of the "completely legal non-confrontational encounter," a phrase which means "illegal underground fight," was fair game.

On this particular Tuesday, Shadow descended into the gilt underbelly of Club "Rouge" to see a motley crew of ruffians had already assembled in one of the pits. They each wore a bizarrely intricate costume, wielded weapons of dubious practicality, and scowled like they had twenty years' worth of tragic back-story to their names. They glowered at Shadow like they wanted to see him violently disemboweled and strung up like a banner at high school prom - and they weren't worth describing further, as not a single one of them existed in the canon.

Shadow acknowledged the OCs with a cordial nod. They launched a barrage of gruesome threats in reply. _Charming as ever, I see_... Rouge had yet to arrive, so he casually swapped barbs with them from outside the ring for a while; all beatings remained strictly verbal until a particularly petulant little worm's cries for spilt ichor became a little too irritating.

Kids today. So impatient. Sighing, the Ultimate Life Form shook his spiky immortal head and hopped into the pit, cracking his knuckles.

At some point, Rouge showed up, grilled Shadow for starting without her, and then flung herself into the fray. The OCs were unsurprisingly all show and no substance; by now, Shadow shouldn't have expected anything more. He still sighed bitterly as he spin-dashed a couple baggy-pantsed jabronis into the Milky Way. None of these chuckleheads, for all of their pointy bells and whistles, knew a single thing about combat. Seriously, it erred quite far enough on the side of excruciatingly masochistic to go swimming around in a disgustingly complex outfit all day, but to then haul it into _battle?_

_Forget battle - how could you get through a single zone like that? _Shadow's brows knit in idle contemplation as he punted a snarling wolverine across the arena like a soccer ball, spun around, and with a lightning-fast backhand rearranged the facial features of the weasel sneaking up behind him. _It's baffling, really._ He grabbed a nearby porcupine by the leg and swung him around like a mace, accidentally blinding a few nondescript OCs in his preoccupation. _Take this chump, for example: the drag produced by the doohickeys hanging off his jeans alone has to be astronomical, to say nothing of the hubris required to go head-to-head with the Ultimate Life Form dressed like a clown and expect to win..._ _Overall competency must be on a planetary decline, _Shadow mused while punching the wisdom teeth out of a hedgewolf or something.

Mopping the floor with the lot of them took no time at all. Afterwards, Shadow and Rouge went upstairs to the bat's loft to celebrate.

Her little hangout was a lavishly-furnished flat, with crisp white couches and plush black carpet. It was decorated artfully - as in, it was decorated with literal pieces of art that Rouge stole – and the bat's addiction to luxury made itself flamboyantly conspicuous. Practically everything sparkled to some degree – the counter tops, the door handles, the tap water. Her dishtowels were bedazzled at the edges; everything in the fridge was plastered with edible gold foil. She even had money-print toilet paper.

Anyway.

Shadow and Rouge's celebration quickly dissolved from mutual gloating into a heated argument. "You know what? You are entitled to your opinion, but your opinion is factually wrong," Rouge announced, making a vague gesture with her hand. "The red Emerald is the best one, and that's all there is to it. If you want to delude yourself into some weird fantasy world, _fine_, but here in the land of reality-"

"Why won't you listen to reason?!" Shadow nearly shouted. "I am _telling _you, Rouge, the green Chaos Emerald's ultimate superiority is an irrefutable scientific fact and-" All of a sudden the coffee table made a beepity-boop noise. "...Did that table just beep?"

Rouge sighed at him, exasperated and amused. "It's a good thing you're cute."

Shadow couldn't tell if she was insulting the irrefutable scientific fact or his Captain Obvious remark about the table, and he had to puzzle over this in silence for a moment. Meanwhile, Rouge took a sip of her iced tea and tapped the coffee table with her toe. "So! Who begs to bask in my perfection?"

The blue lights lining the base of the coffee table pulsed as a robotic voice replied: "CALLER ID: TALL UNNAMED HUMAN WITH HETEROCHROMIA."

Shadow frowned. "Who?"

"Oh," Rouge said, the smug look falling off her face. "Well, don't just sit there, hook him up!"

"CERTAINLY, LORD ROBOTNIK," thrummed the coffee table.

Shadow frowned more steeply than usual. "..._Who?_"

Rouge shushed him as the coffee table made a soft whirring noise. Suddenly, a panel running along the center of the tabletop slid open with a soft rush of air and a holographic projector emerged, knocking Shadow's drink over. The inconvenience failed to bother him - he was already far too busy being bothered by how nobody was offering him any explanation. The projector proceeded to project a projection of the GUN Commander's scowling head in glorious 3-D.

"About damn time, Agent Rouge," he quipped gruffly. Anyone would be gruff after being forced to endure, for any length of time, the stupid lounge music which she had set as her hold tone.

"I'm screening my calls," she explained, smiling. "Now, what can this bat-girl do for you?"

The floating holo-head paused for a moment, examining Rouge and her couch for grumpy hedgehogs. "...Get Oscar the Grouch on the line first."

"Hmph."

Hearing the interjection, the Nameless GUN Commander's Floating Head swiveled around to look. Shadow waved at him in a sarcastic fashion, then went back to crossing his arms like a sulking child. "Oh good, he's here," the Commander muttered. "Could you sit where I can actually _see _you?"

"Of course, sir," Rouge answered cheerily. She got up and sat as close to Shadow as physically possible, saving him the trouble of moving and depriving him of precious personal space in one graceful motion. "What's up?"

"I've got a new mission for you two." The Floating Head began the debriefing. "As you may or may not already know, there's been a string of kidnappings in Central City. And, as you may or may not already know, the kidnappings are essentially moot. The victims vanish without a trace, stay gone for a few days, and then quietly reappear. Normally, a case like this would be a job for the local police, not GUN."

Rouge nodded. "So what's the twist?"

"The victims, after returning from their sojourns, exhibit some... unusual symptoms. They, firstly, retain no memory of being kidnapped. Secondly, they each are entirely free of any injuries, except for a single, shallow, hole-shaped wound on their forehead." The Commander paused for a moment. "Due to the collective lack of visible contusions anywhere on the body, it's doubtful that any of them suffered any head trauma severe enough to induce amnesia, though trauma of the psychological bent is not out of the question. Finally, every victim so far has come down with a case of depression."

"You say that like it's the common cold," Shadow muttered.

Rouge sharply elbowed the hedgehog in the ribs. Returning her attention to Nameless GUN Commander's Floating Head, she asked: "'_Seems _to be?'"

"They cease participation in any activities other than work, school, sleep, and the intake of nourishment. Quality of their work is either reduced or improved to average level – they don't go above or beyond in any direction, positive or negative. They will not initiate conversations on their own, although they will respond. Talking to them was reported as unusually arduous; it's not because they're difficult, per se, but because they're so _bland_. In every instance recorded thus far, the condition has progressed to such a state that the victims even lose their powers – or the will to use them, at least."

"And what do you expect us to do about it?" Shadow grumbled, rubbing his side. "We aren't psychiatrists."

The Commander's Floating Head sighed. "Let me finish, will you? None of the victims retain any memory of their abduction, but they do tend to remember where they were before they were taken. The locations we've collected from their accounts are all within two miles of the Central High School..."

"...Making it in the center," Rouge interrupted, thoughtful. "What a strange and contrived coincidence."

"Call me crazy, but I doubt the kidnapper went through all that trouble just to make a stupid joke," Shadow muttered.

"You never know..." Rouge murmured cryptically.

Nameless GUN Commander's Floating Head cleared his invisible throat. "A-_hem_. We have reason to believe that these abductions are the work of a supernatural phenomenon. Our profile for the criminal is that of a sanguivorous, nocturnal entity with malevolent and possibly predatory intent that possesses the ability to polymorph at will."

"Ooh! Like a vampire?" Rouge teased.

"Yes, Agent Rouge. A vampire," said the Nameless GUN Commander's Floating Head, without a shred of irony.

For an awkward moment, nobody spoke. Rouge broke the impasse with a bashful giggle. "...Sorry, sir, but could you repeat that?" A sheepish grin twitched across her face. "'Cause if I didn't know any better, I could've sworn you just said 'yes, Rouge, a vampire' without a shred of irony."

"That's because I did." Floating Head didn't sound too proud of it, either. In fact, he sounded like he was losing patience.

His words hung in the air for a moment before they finally penetrated Rouge's pearly skull. "Wait, are you _serious?_" The bat-girl's eyes widened and she regarded the hologram suspiciously. "...Sir, are you feeling okay? Normally we blame things on artifacts, not... monsters."

"Why yes, it _is_ a break from the usual pattern. Shocking, I know." Floaty Head glowered at her. "To be honest, we aren't one-hundred-percent certain it's a vampire at all. This is just the preliminary profile, after all. For all we know, this thing could be _any _life-form that just so happens to have a thirst for the vitality of the youth, or whatever the case may be. But, if it's all right with you, though, we're just going to call it a vampire for now – you know, for the sake of brevity. Is that okay?"

The deadpan sarcasm was so thick you could use it to construct a functional bomb shelter. Still looking a tad unsure, Rouge shot Shadow a sidelong glance_._

"The earth was recently stapled back together by a werehog," Shadow said, shrugging. "Stranger things have happened."

"Yeah, like you." Clearly she'd been hoping that he'd share her feelings on the matter.

Honestly, Shadow didn't care. He just wished these people would get to the point already. "Anyway... the mission...?"

"I was just getting to that," said the Nameless GUN Commander's Floating Head. "You need to infiltrate Central High School and gather any information that you can. The vampire may very well be enrolled in the school like a normal student, or perhaps they could be using it as a base of operations. Even if they aren't, the school is near enough to the kidnappings that rumors will have definitely permeated the consciousness of the student body. You need to get in there, figure out where the vampire is, and get rid of it."

"...Okay. No problem," said Rouge.

Shadow nodded silently. But then, out of the blue, an unpleasant thought struck him.

"When you say 'infiltrate'..." he began, his permafrown deepening.

"...I mean assimilate into the student population for as long as it takes to extract the necessary information, of course," replied the Nameless GUN Commander's Floating Head, vaguely amused. "What, do you think they write down all the rumors by grade and keep them in a file somewhere?"

Shadow felt the bottom fall out of his stomach. "We have to go to school?"

"No, Rouge is going undercover as a janitor," the Nameless GUN Commander's Floating Head explained mildly. As a grandparent, he'd experienced quite a few conversations similar to this one. The effect was awfully surreal. "_You_ have to go to school."

All of a sudden. Shadow jumped off the sofa and slammed his fist into the table, leaving a massive dent. "_What do you MEAN I have to go to school?!_"

And thus we pick up where we left off.

Somehow, Rouge managed to maneuver Shadow's butt back into the sofa. Still reeling from the impact, he hardly noticed. "School? _School?!_ I, who have destroyed _gods_, whose veins run _black_ with the _blood of devils_, am forced to truckle to the educational system like a member of the _unwashed proletariat?_ What do you take me for, some kind of PEN-ultimate?"

"Settle down, Agent Shadow," snapped the Nameless GUN Commander's Floating Head. "No need to pitch a fit. This is _hardly_ a long-term assignment. Considering your level of skill, this will be an in-and-out affair."

The bit of flattery thrown in at the end quieted him up a bit, but Shadow was still perturbed. "Hmph..."

"Oh, don't be like that!" Rouge poked his cheek like a masochist would poke a bruise. "You got the better deal – you get to go to class! Do homework! Steal people's watches! Finally experience a regimented bell schedule!" She was putting together quite a flimsy case. "Maybe even make_ friends!_ Won't that be _fuuuun?_" ...Or, she was mocking him. That was also a distinct possibility.

Shadow glared at the bat-girl silently for a second. "I _like_ being left alone. Why can't _I_ be the janitor?"

"Because you can't," the Commander's Floating Head quipped, exasperated. "Janitors are allowed full access to the building, and their omnipresence goes unquestioned. Rouge is far more adept at data retrieval than you are – _er go_, if the opportunity should present itself, she could access pertinent information faster." Rouge nodded sagely. "Conversely, Agent Rouge is ill-suited to the role of a student because she would waste valuable time attempting to coerce the other pupils into letting her 'take care of' their valuables, and because students are allowed far less freedom. Therefore, the risks of raising unnecessary suspicion are greater - what if they caught her sneaking around? ...Besides, she doesn't look like a gawky teenager, either."

"Why, thank you," Rouge said, batting her eyelashes.

"Ahem. Now, _you_ on the other hand..." The Floating Head rounded on Shadow. "Since you're our youngest agent, Shadow – well, physically at least – nobody will pay any mind to _you_."

"Technically, Omega is younger than I am," Shadow informed the Commander.

"Technically, Omega is 2712.82 pounds of heavy weapons and artillery packed into a robotic casing hand-built by the most dangerous terrorist in the Federation."

"They'll recognize me," Shadow said.

"They'll recognize Sonic," the Commander replied.

"I _said_, they'll recognize me-"

"They will recognize _Sonic_."

And that was the end of _that _conversation.

After all, it wasn't like a GUN agent could just turn down missions when they felt like it. Although he was grinding his fangs, there was really nothing he could do, short of going pitching a temper tantrum and going AWOL... and, as experience had taught him, that scenario didn't have a dignifying ending.

The Commander faxed them sets of personalized information packets which contained everything they needed to know about the school and their roles, announced that they'd start tomorrow, and turned them loose to savor their final day of freedom. It was hard to savor anything, however, especially when the prospect of going to school left such a bitter taste in Shadow's mouth. It wasn't the assignment itself so much as the irony of it all.

Instead of robbing banks as previously planned, Shadow and Rouge had a cram session, poring over their packets. It was probably for the best, all things considered. Shadow's highly-dense packet largely concerned the behavior of _Boringus twerpicus, _the common or garden high schooler, and it came complete with a broad compendium of their dietary habits and social systems. Reading it was exactly as much of a drag as you'd think. Every last mind-numbing facet of the dodecahedron of dull was elucidated in excruciating detail, with a smattering of the classic "Bored GUN Peon sass" thrown in for good measure.

Shadow read the manual aloud under his breath, as was his habit. In fact, he was the type of person that compulsively narrated every part of his life; he had whispered conversations with sudoku puzzles, yelled at video games, and chattered ceaselessly to himself when nobody was around. He managed to keep his mouth clamped shut in polite company, but when the coast was clear, not even the dead knew peace from his jabbering. Maybe this belied some deep-set psychological deficiency of his – perhaps there was a void somewhere in the darkest, most heavily scabbed-over gashes of his wounded soul that ached still, and could only be soothed with adulation and respect... or at the very least, a bit of recognition. Perhaps the quiet pulse of a craving for love and companionship, buried beneath geological layers of stubborn calluses, gently steered his withered husk of a heart, even now. Perhaps he wasn't a loner by nature... perhaps he was merely lonely.

...Yeah, right. Do you need to have a deep psychological reason to read aloud? I'm a-Freud not.

Anyway. Shadow read the manual aloud under his breath, as was his habit.

"'Cliques are formed out of a simple desire to be accepted. It is a well-known fact that teenagers of high school age have a weak sense of identity and often waste a lot of time trying to discover who they are. Therefore, _you_ will blend in perfectly, Agent Shadow.'" Agent Shadow threw the packet on the ground in disgust. "_Tch! _Mark my words, Rouge, I am gonna track down whoever wrote this report and extract his spleen with a picnic fork..."

"...Huh? Mm-hmm," Rouge mumbled.

Rubbing his temples in frustration was more pleasant than attempting to absorb the brick they were trying to pass off as a student handbook into his brain matter, but Shadow reluctantly plucked his discarded packet off the floor and firmly planted his nose back on the dreadful, dreadful grindstone.

"'...In interest of equality, all students are required to follow the district dress code... pants and skirts must be no shorter than knee-length... no open shirts, either; what, did you think this was a vacation to South Island? Surprise! It's not a vacation to South Island.' Hmph, none of this applies to me anyway... 'Keep reading, sucker. Hats are not permissible under any circumstances...' whatever. ...'Top and bottom _non-negotiable?_'" Confused, Shadow squinted. "And just what in high hell does that mean?"

Rouge's voice drifted over from afar. "They just want you to wear pants."

Luckily, Shadow had not been drinking anything at that moment, else he might have spat it out everywhere and ruined the posh carpet. "...Wear?_ Pants?_"

"Yup. And a shirt, too."

The concept was unfathomable."But _why?!_"

Rouge sighed. "There's a lot of reasons. Mostly to cut down on shedding, not to mention the allergy-related lawsuits. And then you have those twerps in kindergarten, who really _need_ pants." Her nose wrinkled slightly. "Mmhm... no, you don't want to sit on a chair that was once sat on by a pants-less kindergartener."

The humid jungles of kindergarten and all of its slurpier intricacies existed only as a nebulous concept drifting at the farthest corners of Shadow's awareness, prompting him to innocently wonder: "Why?"

"You'd probably get sepsis."

Shadow huffed at what he incorrectly assumed was a hyperbolic response. "Sure..."

And back to the depths of brooding he slunk.

Mandatory clothing? Exactly what kind of totalitarian nightmare were they running here? Shadow furrowed his brow so intensely that he might have gone cross-eyed. A shirt by itself, he could probably handle – he'd worn shirts before. But a shirt with pants, _too?_ What next? Would they cram him in a frilly gown, like a Victorian prepubescent? Perhaps a pair of lederhosen would be more suitably embarrassing? No, no - to debase him properly, they'd need to break out the big guns: ugly light-up Christmas sweaters, rubber jelly clogs, impractical auxiliary undergarments for women...

His internal whining wasn't _entirely_ baseless - the amount of itchy, inflamed ingrown hairs a furred person experienced was directly proportional to however much clothing they wore. Scratching the swellings would invite infection, exacerbating the problem. Crusty scabs would tangle in the depths of his undercoat and weepings of agitated sores would mat the fine hairs into a starchy mess, making the leg even itchier, and so on and so forth. Shadow didn't have to do any large calculations to see it: the mad dance of scratch and itch, cyclical in nature, would continue ceaselessly until long after the end of time. His would be an eternity of mild discomfort, a supernova of suffering legs kaleidoscopically spiraling ever onwards into cosmic infinity, flooding the pits of hell and swamping the heavens alike with their negligible hardship. Unless, of course, he actually washed his pants once in a while - but that was beside the point.

The packet was still barely halfway-penetrated, so Shadow grudgingly dragged himself back to the smug chronicle. Five agonizing minutes oozed by.

It wasn't much longer before the reality of the situation dawned upon him. To continue down this path was to descend into madness. The malaise crawling through his flesh had wormed its red fingers deep into his skull. A headache throbbed through his meninges, twisting his vision into a blurred, vagrant stream of meaningless data. His legs ached, his back crawled, his spines tingled as though charged with electric current. If he read one more word - _one more frickin' word - _about the asinine rituals of "dating," he would quite probably explode.

The acid taste of defeat bloomed upon his palate. Crippled at last, Shadow slumped over in his seat. Time ground to a halt - the accursed packet slipped from limp fingers, falling in slow motion and landing with an echoing rustle that shook the very foundations of the casino. It was all very dramatic.

"I can't," he murmured. "I can't do it. I can't read this. It's just so..." He groped for words. "..._boring._"

"You'll get through it." Like powdered sugar, Rouge's words of encouragement were dry, flaky, and insubstantial.

"You don't understand - these, these_ teenagers_... the petty machinations of their lives are nothing! Boy friends and girl friends and the Big Fat Stupid Dance... hmph!" Shadow grit his fangs. "And I'm supposed to assimilate into the horde? Screw that! I can't do it, I just can't. I _refuse_ to submerge myself in the whirling slop cauldron of their fetid, stinking youth culture."

Rouge nodded. "That's nice..."

Shadow cast a glance at where she sprawled out on the floor, engrossed with her invisible wrist communicator, and raised an eyebrow. "You seem cavalier."

"You can bet on it," she replied distractedly. Playing invisible Bejeweled was far more interesting than Shadow's bellyaching – and the packet, for that matter.

Over on the sofa, the chimera rolled his eyes. Wearily, he retrieved his packet once again and fixed it with a hollow stare. "Small grievances aside, I doubt any of this information is sticking... Going at this rate, I might very well compromise the mission. What do you propose I do to change this?"

The bat-girl hummed a little. "Wonderful, wonderful..."

A pause.

"...Oh, would you look at that. A fifty-million karat diamond just floated in through the window."

Rouge bolted out of her stupor. "Huh? Seriously?"

"No!" Shadow snapped. "You're not listening to me!"

"You know what?" Rouge planted a hand on her hip and shot him a look that could shrivel flowers. "I've already heard enough! Shadow, I've already _been_ to high school. It's lame. Wow! Guess what! Here's a fun fact: I don't need you giving me the play-by-play of how boring it is, okay?"

"Rouge..." He couldn't get a word in edgewise because she reared up like a cobra, talking over him.

"You know something, though?" Tone sharpened like a blade, Rouge advanced on him. "Boring is _all _it is. It's not difficult. Heck, I do the same thing you do, just while cleaning floors. You don't even have to try. Literally all you have to do is throw on some pants, park your butt in the back of the classroom, and listen for someone to say 'vampire.' Boom. Suspect. We investigate. We pursue and destroy. Then, bing! Paycheck." She slid her finger along an imaginary flow chart. "Wash, wash. School, school. Wallop. Dosh."

"But-"

"Shadow, this mission is _nothing_. We got this in the bag!" She patted him on the knee. "Just chill out already!"

"If it were anything else, I would," Shadow said. "But this packet could contain-"

Without breaking eye contact, Rouge ripped the student handbook from his hands and threw it across the room. "There! Now you listen to me, ya whiner..." She gripped his shoulders and stared into his eyes like a cobra. "You didn't hear me the first time, I guess. _I've already been to high school._ You are talking to a diploma-certified high school expert. I spent four years in the trenches, Shadow. I know the battlefield as well as anyone can." Her smirk slowly revealed a fang as it widened. "Packet's too aggravating for ya? Forget it. If you have a problem, you come to me. Don't you worry your pretty little head about a thing."

"And what of clothing?" Shadow challenged.

"No sweat. Despite how hilarious it would be for you to blunder into high school legend wearing that purple Eighties waistcoat thing... I'll get you something nice and comfy." She winked.

His doubts still clung. "Supplies?"

"I got it on lock." Rouge tilted her head, eyelashes a-fluttering, and pouted: "C'mon, Shadow. Don't you trust me?"

Shadow seemed to tense up a bit. "Ugh... very well."

"Atta boy." The bat-girl's fangs glittered in her smile. "In fact, you can go on ahead and do whatever you were gonna do today, and I'll get everything ready for ya. You'll see – all this high school crap, it's _so_ much more intuitive when you learn through actually doing it."

"I hope that's true, because on paper it's far too convoluted to process..."

"Yeah, it's like reading spaghetti." Rouge made a face. She seized Shadow by the wrists, hauled him to his feet, and started to guide him to the door. "Anyway - you leave this to me."

Shadow continued to be anchored to hesitation. He shot her a look faintly bruised with concern - "...Are you _sure?_"

"Of course I'm sure. Have I ever steered you wrong?"

"Well..."

"Go on, get out of here!" Rouge threw open the door and shooed him out, cackling. "Carpe diem, carpe noctem! Go! Be free! Enjoy it while it lasts!"

Her actions were ostensibly good-natured, but there was a slight edge to it all that made Shadow worried he'd done something wrong. Perhaps his constant muttering was grating to sensitive bat ears? Or maybe he was just 'complaining' a bit too much? Shadow frowned, perplexed. They seemed like legitimate concerns to him...

Whatever the case, Rouge kicked him out the door and left him alone on the landing, blinking stupidly at a poker-themed wall sconce. "...Hmph," he finally murmured. "It looks like I'm not needed around here."

_Well, if Rouge wants to do all the boring junk by herself, then far be it from me to deny her that choice, _he thought. With a small shrug, he retrieved his green Chaos Emerald from his... inventory and warped off to the shadow of the Egg Fleet.

Reality peeled around him with an icy pinch as he warped through endless nothing. It was highly refreshing.

He stepped out onto the checkered grass of some other zone and started skating around, yelling his robot comrade's code-name. Reducing a few airships to molten slag with Omega always made his day brighter.


	3. Shadow is Nasty to Authority Figures

Skirting silver disks of moonlight, it came slithering, oozing through darkness.

It sensed warmth, it sensed strength. It could not see, but It could feel the presence of prey... soft, delicious prey. It was hungry.

And It was fast.

Tonight's victim was a girl, a young cat with gray fur. She was a high school student, walking home from the convenience store, dangling a plastic bag full of canned lemonade from two relaxed fingers. She knew this neighborhood well, and even if some creep _did_ decide to jump her, the cat was confident her toxic claws could protect her. She was very wrong in her assumption, but this never crossed her mind.

In fact, she had no idea what she'd be dealing with tonight, and so from the beginning she stood no chance. She even had the audacity to leave the house in her pajamas - she was only restocking on drinks for her slumber party, after all. It wasn't the kind of errand you dress up for. Nevertheless, the facts remained: a blue Sonic t-shirt and some soft shorts wouldn't stop the teeth. Lemonade would not slake the thirst.

The cat-girl walked cheerfully down a sidewalk bronzed by the municipal streetlights, swinging her bag of treats and thinking only of truth-or-dare. It was a game that required a certain degree of strategy. A proper dare must be impressive enough to inspire cries of disbelief all around – yet a reasonable degree of feasibility is a must. Otherwise, the dare is reduced from a masterful specimen of grandeur to little more than a pathetic joke. Premeditation is crucial in these matters. She scrunched her nose up in deep thought, weighing the pros and cons of various possibilities – eat a whole glass of cinnamon? Lick a used kleenex? It was difficult to choose - _so _much hung in the balance.

Suddenly, the cold wind blew, ripping dry leaves from black branches and vanishing them into the barren sky. In the urban midnight, the only stars in the heavens were those mounted upon skyscrapers, but tonight something about the abyss overhead seemed unusually empty.

The cat-girl halted, perhaps sensing something.

Something stirred in her peripheral vision - pallid pink, a flicker of red.

She dropped the lemonade with a clatter and unsheathed acidic purple sabers, fur standing on end. "Who's there?!"

Her only response was the low moan of the wind.

The cat-girl slowly relaxed, her claws sliding back into her fingers. "...Man, it's late. I'm seeing things," she muttered to herself, shaking her head. Her tail remained bushed with unease, but she picked up her bag of drinks and continued on her way, a bit faster this time.

There was a loud crash in the alleyway.

She jumped and spun around, breathing hard - all right, that was _quite_ enough.

_It's probably just a ricky_, she thought sourly, but her heart was rattling in her ribcage like a trapped bird. The cat-girl set the drink bag down and whipped out her claws once more. Tentatively, she crept toward the open maw of the alley, squinting into the gloom.

It was dark – the gold light from the streetlamps didn't reach into these shadows. The cat-girl heard something scuffling faintly, and made out the dim outline of a toppled trash can. Maybe one of those blue group animals was digging around... she could catch it and give it to her chao. She advanced.

But the scuffling didn't sound like that of an animal. It sounded like something bigger, almost toddler-sized – the cat-girl's eyes began to adjust – and it looked like-

The cat-girl froze, paralyzed with sudden fear. That – no, that couldn't be right! No way! She was seeing things wrong, it was dark –

Suddenly, the thing stopped moving.

Laboriously, It withdrew Its grossly distended head from the trash can and crawled backwards through the heap of filth. The cat-girl's eyes widened –

A pink flash, a widening smile filled with teeth like dirty, rusted needles. Its eyes were shut tight, as though It were sleeping.

But no sleeping thing could have leapt so quickly.

Sharp fangs dug into flesh, blood splattered the pavement, a scream was stifled before it could stir the air. No one heard the body fall.

* * *

Wednesday morning arrived.

Overall, Amy's expectations for the day were not high. Wednesday was the day when tedium reached its apex. It didn't have any of the daunting despair of Monday, nor the relative proximity to the weekend boasted by Thursday. It was too far from either end of the week to inspire any emotion at all, and thus it was the hardest to slug through. Once it was over, at least, one was that much closer to freedom. Knowing this provided about as much comfort as knowing that if a chainsaw hacked off one of your legs, you'd stub your toes half as much.

The morning was cold, but sweat slithered down her skin in humid rivers. Futilely trying to squeeze it out of her quills, Amy arrived at a conclusion: it really, _really_ sucked that you couldn't grind upwards outside of Soleanna's borders. With her winter coat wadded up under one arm, the pink hedgehog staggered into her first classroom of the day and collapsed into her seat. The most she could do was gasp for air and pray to remain conscious. Her knees felt like warm gelatin, and a blush of exertion burned under her cold cheeks.

These were all symptoms of having to wake up at 4:30 and scale City Escape in order to get to school on time. Now, Amy's downtown apartment and the uptown high school were barely separated by a mile of lateral distance, but in Central City, "downtown" and "uptown" were gruelingly literal concepts. In its true form, Amy's route to school consisted mostly of perfect ninety-degree inclines peppered with winding flights of stairs and stairs and stairs. Right in the middle of the whole production was a nice big loop-de-loop; precariously balanced atop an inexplicably-vertical section of sidewalk, it came complete with rows of dash pads pointing in the wrong direction. You know, in case it wasn't difficult enough already to walk up a literal _wall_. This and other scenic features essentially extended the length of the commute by a number of lightyears.

Of course, the way down was about as difficult as jumping off a diving board, but Amy wasn't thinking that far ahead at the moment. In truth, she was struggling to stay conscious.

The bell would ring soon, but Amy couldn't care less. Her aching head felt like a bowling ball tethered to the rest of her body by a bit of yarn. Giving up all pretense of appearances, she let it thud onto her desk – the rest of her body followed suit, slumping onto the wood-patterned plastic like a withering flower stalk. She stared out the window in a catatonic trance for quite a while.

All of a sudden, something unusual caught her eye. It was the first sign that something wasn't quite right: a new janitor, inexplicably mopping the sidewalk and whistling cheerfully.

This janitor happened to be wearing a cobalt-blue jumpsuit, which was admittedly why Amy stopped in her tracks in the first place. Now, Amy didn't exactly have a vigilant finger firmly pressed on the pulse of the janitorial world, but even she could dimly perceive through her laundry list of vision problems that this was a new member of the cleaning crew. For one thing, this stranger's orchid aura was strikingly different to the others she'd seen – it was marbled with fuchsia swirls of deceit, with a pink greedy haze sticking close to the skin. She could scarcely pick out anything but the jumpsuit, and yet... something about the metaphysical glow was distractingly familiar.

But when she saw a cool and Sonic-like hedgehog randomly appear in the parking lot, she naturally assumed she was hallucinating. It wouldn't have been the first time.

* * *

Meanwhile, in the parking lot, Shadow was having a bit of a crisis.

He was under attack. The enemy had devoured Shadow head-first, pinning his arms to his sides and smothering his face with a starchy membrane. All sensory input was abruptly severed - he heard only dry rustling, saw only dark wrinkles. And it was getting rather hard to breathe – the realization dawned that he would soon suffocate if he didn't choke down some oxygen, and fast.

Thrashing around like a pupating larvae, Shadow managed to wrench an arm free of its binds, but in so doing lost his balance and toppled over, hitting the ground with a loud expletive. Vague pain bloomed on his hipbone – bruised, most likely. Was that all? Shadow grit his fangs and grinned bitterly even as he struggled in his captor's constricting gullet. Hmph, he ate bruises for _breakfast_.

With gargantuan difficulty, he maneuvered his hand back into his line of sight. Finally putting his strange, elongated nose to good use, he pecked furiously at his invisible wrist communicator and hissed urgently, painfully aware of every crucial particle of oxygen spent: "Rouge! Rouge! Agent Shadow, requesting backup!"

No response.

Had he broken it in the fall? Shadow frowned - you could never tell with these damn things.

Suddenly, something hard nudged his skull, prompting the Ultimate Life Form to jump a good six meters straight up. Considering he had started out prostrate, it was pretty impressive.

Through some bizarre stroke of luck he landed on his feet. He struggled to bark out threatening noises to this new challenger while wobbling around like a flailing cocoon with legs. The challenger seized his membranous prison firmly and yanked it downwards – there was a ghastly pinching sensation as his skull was forced through an iron vice – and suddenly, Shadow's gigantic head emerged into daylight at last, gasping and covered with a thin layer of spit. "_Gaargh!_"

"I get here and you're thrashing around in the middle of the parking lot like some kind of idiot." His savior, Rouge, sighed. "Could you be any more dramatic?"

"Dare you trivialize a battle betwixt life and certain DEATH?" Shadow spat. "I could have DIED, Rouge!"

"Oh," the bat said gravely, comprehending the gravity of the situation at last. "You have washed your hands with the viscera of primordial gods, wrestled a cancer lizard to death in a vat full of gasoline while wearing fiery rocket boots, and endured atmospheric immolation with only a bit of amnesia to show for it, but _putting on a t-shirt_ is what finally kills you."

"That's right," Shadow said, tugging the shirt down with finality. "And the Eclipse cannon is not powered by gasoline – rather, the fluorescent fluid flooding the cannon's core is composed of a very complex hydrogen-3 compound that is actually quite safe until exposed to-"

"...Your horribly dull personality, yes, I know." Rouge rolled her eyes and idly adjusted the lapels of her navy janitorial jumpsuit so they were a bit more revealing. Much better.

Shadow was offended and also unable to come up with a timely response, so he just threw out a noncommittal humph. The shirt was more deserving of his energy, anyway.

Rouge regarded him with no small amount of disgust as he struggled with the arm holes. "Need some help?"

"No! I'm the Ultimate Life Form, a marvel of modern medicine! I can dress myself!"

"Yeah, you'd think so, but..."

"_No!_" Shadow barked.

A few pitiful moments passed.

"...Maybe," Shadow said.

The next minute or so was probably the nadir of Shadow's life in terms of not looking foolish.

"...Okay, yes, yes I do need help," the marvel of modern medicine conceded - his limbs and the t-shirt were so hopelessly entangled, it could have confused a Celtic knot. "Help me."

An evil grin slithered across Rouge's pretty face and she waggled a finger at him. "Ah-ah-ah! What's the magic word?"

"NOW!"

Rouge shrugged. "Eh, close enough." She descended upon Shadow and with a flurry of deft motions stuffed his limbs into the proper holes. Upon completion she smacked his rump for closure. "And... voila! Ready for the catwalk."

Shadow rubbed his butt sulkily, grumbling.

Now that it was draped on his body properly, the t-shirt could be seen in its entirety – it was made of cheap, white fabric, with the words "Undercover GUN Agent" emblazoned across the chest in navy blue. It was about the quality you'd expect from dollar store iron-on letters. Although it was classified as a "woman's small," the shirt was still awfully huge on him.

Rouge admired her work gleefully, biting her thumbnail through her glove (somehow). "Oooh... Lookin' good!"

"Subtle," Shadow grunted.

"Come on, it's reverse psychology." Rouge gestured broadly to the school building. "The stupid kids will never think twice."

"Hmph." Shadow plucked at the starchy fabric distastefully, mourning the fact that his chestfluff could no longer blow majestically in the wind. "It'll have to do, I suppose."

And he would have run into the school like that if Rouge hadn't grabbed his arm before he could escape. "Not so fast, handsome. Aren't you forgetting something?"

Oh, brother. "I tell you, no-one will notice! My legs are black!"

"Aw, stuff it." Rouge dug around in his backpack and produced a pair of jeans – well, they were capris for young girls, but they'd still make Shadow look like a low-rider.

"They have flowers embroidered on the pockets," Shadow moaned.

Choosing to ignore his implied message, Rouge smiled wickedly. "Why yes, they do."

Through some black sorcery Rouge managed to stuff Shadow's gigantic feet through the pant legs. That was only the first hurdle – after she hitched them up around his hips, the capris fell down almost instantly. "I was prepared for this," Rouge declared to the steadily-growing crowd of horrified onlookers, whipping out a roll of duct tape. The audience gasped.

"_Woman!_" Shadow roared, squirming like a petulant child. "Mark my words, you will rue this day! If you put that on me I swear I'll-"

The subsequent death threats were obscured by the obnoxiously loud sounds of Rouge taping the capris to Shadow's torso. Why she didn't just use a belt (and, further, why Shadow didn't just warp away from forced cross dressing and tape bondage) remains unknown to this day. But do you _really_ want to know the answer to those questions?

Once he was finally up to code, Rouge released her furious partner. It was like setting lose a raging bull. Upon touching the ground he was off like a rocket, mercilessly boosting through the parking lot, knocking cars everywhere, melting large portions of the asphalt, exploding through the front door, and giving all nearby students a collective heart attack in the blink of an eye. The net property damage rapidly escalated into the millions.

"You forgot your lunch!" Rouge yelled.

* * *

Amy had not prepared herself for this.

When she saw the new student, her brain essentially shut down. She fell off her chair and hit the floor with a strangled shriek_, _although when recounting this story in the future, she would stubbornly make sure to forget that detail.

Her worst fears had crystallized into a perfect nightmare right before her eyes! He was standing right there – right there – _right at the front of the class!_ Staring straight at her, boring holes in her skull with that piercing stare – the very color of Emeralds! Even though he was wearing a loose pair of jeans and a GUN t-shirt, it was him, it was unmistakably him - his quills were so uniquely windswept and cool-looking; his soft ears so perked and velvety; his handsome face so precisely twisted to that perfect degree of aloof detachment. Everything about him was ultimately perfect.

Amy forced herself to breathe. No... no... she was at her weakest here. School was her kryptonite! If he saw the squalor in which she wallowed every weekday, the torture through which she was forced to wade, Sonic would never respect her! One does not respect a pig, no matter how cute and pink!

Amy looked pleadingly at the ceiling, but it offered her no escape. If only she knew how to use the Chaos Control - she could warp off to a hole and die while she still had dignity left. "Please, Lord, take me now," she whispered, shutting her eyes.

Outside her little pocket universe, the class was carrying on as normal. The other students were all thoroughly jaded to Amy's theatrics by this point in the game and knew better than to pay her any mind when she got in one of her Moods.

Besides, the fresh-meat was far more worthy of their attention. Upon first look, he looked like yet another poser trying to fake Sonic the Hedgehog's style. Very mainstream – he looked just like the guy, however, so perhaps he deserved _some _credit. Ten other fakers with the same celebrity haircut eyed the threat warily, lest he forget whose territory he now stood upon.

"...please welcome our new student, Slim Shady the Real!"

Something rippled through the newcomer's face and he tore the transcript from the teacher's hands. "What the- aw, _hell_," he grumbled, pressing his face into his palm.

"Is something the matter?" wondered the teacher, who was a tall blonde human with purple-tinted shades.

Fresh-meat sighed heavily and turned his gaze to the heavens. "I suppose."

The teacher stared at the kid, expecting more explanation than that. "Well? What?"

"It's just that the Guardian Units of..." Suddenly, the new student furrowed his brow, recalculating. "...er, _me_ – that is to say, my guardians – have a really terrible sense of humor."

"...Uh-huh. Well, it takes all kinds, as I always say..." the teacher said, rolling his eyes a little as he reached for the transcript. He was clearly suspecting the kid had only _just_ realized his name was a lame pop culture reference.

Lip curled, the newcomer shot the teacher's open hand a withering look. "Are you blind, human? The transcript says _Slim Shady_ on it, for crying out loud."

"But... that _is_ your name, right?"

"Why yes, my dear parents named me after some rap man on the television."

"So... that's a yes?"

The newcomer slammed his fist into the wall and roared,"_No!_ Of course it's not! Do you even _grasp_ the gravity of your accusations? To label your spawn as such would be to force upon him,_ from infancy_, the chains of a legacy – constantly forced to be someone else, someone he will probably never even know! He'd be expected, nay, required to be dripping in money and bitches at every given moment! Exactly _how_ far up your own asshole do you need to cram your head to even_ find _the gumption to shackle your own flesh and blood to that kind of crippling social stigma? People deserve to make their own choices! And by naming your son Slim Shady, you rob him of that basic right! It's _unconstitutional, dammit!_"

Shaking with passion, the new student advanced upon the teacher, his every word exploding with impact. Even the foundations of the building shivered in fearful awe.

His voice swelled in crescendo, flooding the room with its power. "No, Mr. _Teacher,_ my name is _not_ 'Slim Shady,' nor 'Snoopy Dog,' nor 'The Big, Yet Smalls!' My way is not carved for me by money and bitch-having celebrities – _I alone determine my path!_ I am Shadow, _Shadow the hedgehog_, and I determine my own destiny! THIS IS _WHO I AM!_"

For a moment, there was nothing but stunned silence.

The fresh-meat took a deep breath and stepped back, still shimmering with emotion. "...The fact that I am dripping in money and bitches notwithstanding, of course."

At the conclusion of the speech, it was apparent that the status quo had shifted. The poor teacher, whose name was really Mr. Stewart, and roughly half of the students were cowering under their desks. Sufficiently impressed by his audition, the still-seated students traded quizzical looks – perhaps they were wrong. Maybe this chump was just the entertainment they'd been waiting for.

Meanwhile, the chump tossed the slightly-crumpled transcript to the floor near the teacher and leveled the classroom with a glare. "Alright - listen up, you punks. If any of you call me anything other than 'Shadow,' so help me, I'm _kicking your ass_. Got it?"

A murmur of assent reverberated through the room.

The teacher's head tentatively emerged from below his desk, like that of a cautious turtle. "Now, Mr. Shady -"

The look Shadow shot his way could have melted steel.

Mr. Stewart cleared his throat quickly and tried again. "Sh-_Shadow_, I said Shadow. I don't approve of your at-at-attitude, or language, or any... anything, really, and, uh... um..." He seemed to slowly arrive at the realization that he was out of his league and abandoned ship, muttering under his breath. "...Y-You know what, forget it. They'll deal with you in detention."

Shadow cocked an eyebrow. "Will they, now?"

The teacher suddenly lapsed into a peculiar coughing fit and busied himself with digging out his alphabetized seating chart. "_Real... Real..._ All right, 'Shadow,' you c-can sit here for now..." And then he pointed out the only empty seat in the class, which was, predictably enough, right next to Amy's.

_Great_, Shadow thought. _They put me next to the village idiot._

Mentally cursing the bureaucracy for doing this to him, Shadow shuffled over and flopped into his chair.

Now, Amy had missed the whole production. Her stomach struggled to contain a churning storm of butterflies, as though the entire monarch migration had taken up roost in her stomach and, upon discovering the joys of hydrochloric acid, was having second thoughts. This was awful, absolutely awful...

Or... was it?

The pink hedgehog's heart started thudding like a subwoofer as it finally clicked. Everything suddenly made sense: a chance encounter yesterday, followed by joining her in the same class? This had to be destiny! Fate was telling her something! How could she have been so blind? _This was her big break! _

Sonic lived free like the wind, roaming wherever he pleased and doing whatever he felt like... so naturally, he would loathe the rigid institution of school with every fiber of his being. He wouldn't look down on Amy – he would finally _understand!_ And then, they would bond over mutual dislike of homework, of school lunch, of teachers! She would ask him for tutoring, and they would study diligently for some time - only to somehow wind up in a compromising position! Sonic would recoil, blushing chastely, but little would he realize that the grand seduction was already in motion!

In no time at all, their hearts would be ablaze! She would shower him with flowers, stuff his locker with love notes, flash him her garter in the hallway! They would fall in love! They would hold hands! Eat lunch on the roof together! Kiss under the cherry blossoms! Race to school with bread in their mouths! Get married and crank out more babies than stars in the sky! It was the perfect plan! Exclamation mark!

Her greatest fantasy was just beyond the horizon! She could almost taste it - Sonic whispering those three magic words, leaning in, and... _score!_ A mad cackle might have escaped her lips, or maybe a delighted squeal; she couldn't be sure. School shot up her list of favorite things faster than a rocket sled on rails. After all, it just handed her a chance to get with the man of her dreams – this place was truly heaven!

Somehow, the tired voice of Mr. Stewart penetrated her dreamy haze: "Amy, get off the floor."

She scrambled haphazardly into her chair, still thoroughly ecstatic, and somehow managed to drunkenly arrange her limbs in a sitting position. Far away, the rest of the students snickered. Sonic just walked over and took his seat next to her, as though nothing was out of the ordinary. In fact, he looked almost like he was ignoring her.

_The cold shoulder, eh? _Amy thought, giggling fiendishly to herself. _We'll see how long THAT lasts..._

Sighing, Mr. Stewart muttered something about his paycheck and turned back to the whiteboard. "N-Now... if you'll all open your books to page five hundred and ten, we can pick up where we left off. Napolion was a very prideful man with a notoriously short temper..."

As no textbooks magically materialized in his hands, Sonic contented himself with staring out the window. Amy contented herself with staring at Sonic.

After a moment, he must have sensed something was wrong, because he turned around, lip curled suspiciously - only to be assaulted by Amy's best rendition of bedroom eyes. The delivery was kind of butchered, to be sure, but she tried her darndest. "..._What?_"

"The book's under your chair," she whispered dreamily.

Sonic's spines bristled. "Look here, girl. I have no idea what manner of freakish optical conditions swim through the depths of your vitreous humor, but I also don't care," he whispered sharply. "You need to get it through your skull that I am _not Sonic_."

"Whatever you say, Sonic..."

Sonic stared at her for a second and then shook his head, any emotion that might have lingered in his gaze vanishing completely. "Hmph, I'm not gonna play this game."

...Wait, "hmph?" Did he say "_hmph?!_"

Suddenly Sonic's hair blackened and twisted, streaks of bloody red splitting open all over his body. His face seemed to become more severe, his mask more tan, his irises more bloodshot and kind of terrifying. Sanguine patches bled around the rims of his eyes. Lean muscles inflated ever-so-slightly, shoulders broadened. His quills bent upwards in jagged points, sharp as his menacing fangs, and instead of wildflowers he started to smell like a molotov cocktail of perfume, gunpowder, and something thoroughly alien.

Cold horror seized Amy by the throat. She scrunched her eyes shut and furiously scrubbed them with her knuckles.

She needn't have bothered. Shadow, in all his gritty glory, continued to stare at her critically.

"Cripes," Amy murmured. "The withdrawals are getting worse..."

Withdrawals? Shadow raised an eyebrow incredulously, idly wondering just how deep this girl's problems ran. But then he remembered something important: he didn't care.

He shook his head, leaned back, and stared at the fluorescent light matrix set into the ceiling. _Ah, the Matrix. A classic film... _The flickering of the cheap lighting fixtures was almost hypnotic. Shadow was just settling into a nice, light sleep when some jackass had the gall to tap him on the shoulder.

He half-opened one eye and nonchalantly examined the culprit.

"Psst," Amy hissed. "Wake up!"

"Sorry, Pinky. I don't take orders," Shadow boasted. Very cool.

Pinky wouldn't shut up, though. "If you sleep in class, they'll put you in detention," she warned.

Her grave tone was amusing. Shadow yawned. "Uh-huh. So what?"

Amy balked, having never before considered that some people might not feel threatened by the prospect of staying at school for A Whole Extra Hour.

Seeing that he had blown her mind, Shadow smirked and returned to his nap.

Through all of this Mr. Stewart had droned on and on about Napolion's irrational hatred of Spagonia, and was now approaching the audience participation portion of the lecture. "In fact, Napolion's grudge would come to be known as one of his three greatest failures. Now, can any of you tell me what the other two were?"

He turned around, pretending to browse among a sudden forest of raised hands, even though nobody had moved a muscle. A serene smile on his face, he sighed. "Well, don't all get up at once." _Oh, well. Better pick on the new kid... _Emboldened by Shadow's relative inactivity since the opening manifesto, he said, "How about you, Mr. Real? ...Mr. Real?"

He was answered with a gravelly snore.

_Oh, no_, Amy thought, sinking in her chair. _It's happening._

An involuntary spasm rippled through Mr. Stewart's face. He casually reached down, picked up a Expo marker from the whiteboard tray, and rolled it contemplatively between his fingers, "Ahem. So, class... I've got a little fun fact for you. Did you know I used to be the dart-throwing champion back in university? They used to call me 'Chalkboard Charlie,' since I'd practice with chalk when there weren't any darts handy." Still smiling calmly, he chucked the marker at the sleeping hedgehog with deadly force.

Without turning a hair, Shadow caught the projectile and crushed it in his fist. "Some champion," he muttered, and went back to sleep.

Seventeen gray hairs appeared on Mr. Stewart's head at that precise moment, and the corner of his strained grin rattled like an angry hornet. "Ha! Well, well. Looks like we've got ourselves a joker, huh?"

Amy covered her eyes._ Here it comes..._

The rest of the class watched, mystified, as the teacher marched over and slammed his fist on the snoozing new kid's desk, cracking the plastic.

"Cheese and _rice_, human, what do you want?" Shadow snapped, thoroughly startled despite himself.

"Why, Mr. Real! How nice of you to join us!" A fanatical grin splitting his face, Mr. Stewart loomed over the punk and snarled, "_Name Napolion's three great failures._"

"Losing the battle of Trafaligator, the entire fiasco that was the Continental System, and invading Borschta in the winter," Shadow recited tonelessly, "among others. Now, if you would kindly get out of my face before I judo-toss you out the window."

Mr. Stewart fixed Shadow with the iciest stare he could muster. "...Listen here, hedgehog. You might think you can pretend to be just like one of those trash-talking antiheroes on the TV, but here in the land of Real Life, actions have consequences. Such as..." - he slapped a pink slip on Shadow's cracked desk and sneered - "_detention. _Now, I don't care about Napolion and, clearly, neither do you, but for both our sakes, can you at least _pretend_ to pay attention?"

"Consider me cowed," Shadow muttered smugly.

Incensed that corporal punishment was no longer allowed in Central City, Mr. Stewart ground his teeth and stalked back to his desk. If only he lived in a world where bratty copycat hedgehogs weren't so easily influenced by Archie comics or the supposedly secret adventures of actual GUN agents. Really, naming yourself after Agent Shadow? This kid was such a tryhard. Mr. Stewart picked up another marker and was about to return to the lesson when – "What in the _world_ is that humming noise?"

After a moment or two of investigating the PA speaker he realized that the students were vibrating with barely-suppressed laughter.

_Ingrates! _Mr. Stewart turned around and glared at the lot of them until they quieted down, and then he glared at Shadow for two minutes until the hedgehog finally deigned to get the history book out from under his desk and open it. The teacher took a deep breath and remembered what his anger management DVD had told him. "All right. Adjusting to a new school can be difficult, as we all know. If we can do our best to be respectful of each other, though, this will be a lot smoother for everyone. Anyway. Now that we're all settled in, let's get right back to it..."

Having thoroughly cemented his image as an incorrigible ass, Shadow yawned and flipped through his history book until he got to the section on the ARK. He boasted a brain pre-programmed with encyclopedic knowledge of world history, but it was only accurate up until fifty years ago. Might as well try to learn a few things, even if they were just the particulars of a sanitized cover-up story written by the government.

Now, you might think that being such a blatant dick would be counter-productive to an undercover mission as it draws unnecessary attention, and you might be right. You might even assume that the logical progression of such a mission would be to make friends with as many people as possible so that they would happily tell you everything. The problem was that this method took time, and Shadow wasn't exactly patient. Besides, he wasn't interested in "friendship." He figured that a toxic attitude would encourage the studentry to leave him alone, freeing him to conduct his investigation on his own terms.

Amy, being slightly dumb, did not pick up on these subtleties.

"Wow, Shadow. That was something else," she whispered, giggling nervously. "You sure showed him!"

Shadow would probably have been half as annoyed if only she were being sarcastic. "Don't talk to me."

"I mean, mega-_wow._ You really don't take crap from nobody! They start talkin' down to you, you just shut 'em down!" Amy batted her eyelashes dreamily. "I wish_ I _could do stuff like that, Shadow..."

"I didn't do anything _commendable_, you twit," he muttered, kneading his temples. "He's a bitter man working a thankless job for the benefit of ungrateful brats. The lowest-hanging of fruit."

"Yeah, but still, it was really inspiring! I mean, Mr. Stewart always picks on me."

"That is likely because you make an ass out of yourself on a regular basis."

Blissfully ignoring him, Amy continued to prattle. "Okay, so, like, you're Mr. Secret Agent Man, right? Soooo... what's a guy like you doing in a place like this?" She bit her lip, grinning with barely-restrained glee.

Shadow looked at her strangely. "...It's classified."

A stifled squeal blasted out of her lungs - the horrible noise was reminiscent of a kitten being stepped on. "_Eeeee!_ I've always wanted to hear you say that!"

There was a rather resonant _thonk_, and Shadow noticed an expo marker had suddenly buried itself in the side of her head.

"Do you know what I've always wanted to hear _you_ say, Ms. Rose?" Mr. Stewart cooed from across the room. He leaned forward, grinning, and did a rather accurate impersonation of Amy: "'Ooh, Sonic! Sonic Sonic Sonic! Sonic this, Sonic that... Hey! You know what?_ Maybe I'll actually shut up for once and pay attention!_'"

The class rumbled with laughter and Amy bowed her pink head in shame, blushing.

Shadow shook his head and sighed. As he understood it, until the teacher was finished with the lecture phase, the class wouldn't be able to move on to individual work, which was the only time when the students were allowed to talk among themselves. At the rate the lesson currently kept starting and stopping, Shadow would never hear any rumors. He probably shouldn't have grated on the teacher's nerves like he had, because now the teacher was actively looking for a fight – but he had already made his bed. With their inane banter disrupting the class, Shadow and Amy were only giving the poor man reasons to get angrier. Following the chain of cause and effect lead to the root problem – he was only encouraging Amy by responding.

_Ignoring her should probably be enough to suck the wind out of her sails,_ Shadow decided, and thus resolved to block her out from his mind.

Fortunately for him, Amy's spirit was sufficiently subdued by the mocking cackles surrounding her, and she didn't talk to him again for the rest of the period. She did, however, sneak curious glances when she thought he couldn't see.


End file.
